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home >> what we do >> program advocacy >> POPS

Program Advocacy

POPS (Project for Older Prisoners)

Last spring, SURJ and the Delaware Center for Justice (DCJ) hosted the ninth annual Visions of Justice forum.  The keynote speaker for this event, Jonathon Turley, executive director for the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS) spoke at length about the program he created to assist low-risk, geriatric offenders with supervised pre-release.  Over eighty people attended the event, which also featured Carl Danberg (Commissioner, Department of Correction), the Honorable Richard Gebelein (Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware), and Ina Li, M.D. (Associate Director of Geriatric, Family, and Community Medicine at the Wilmington Hospital) as guest speakers. 

During the course of the forum, Mr. Turley explained the many reasons why it makes sense to reevaluate the sentences of older inmates.  In particular, he provided three compelling arguments.  Across the country, states are experiencing overcrowding in prisons.  The costs to taxpayers are enormous, and the medical costs of older inmates are much more than those of younger inmates—nationally, these costs can be upwards of $30,000 more per older inmate a year.  In many cases, keeping these older prisoners in prison does not protect the public—multiple studies of criminal recidivism have shown that older individuals are much less likely to commit crimes than younger individuals—that is they tend to "age out" of crime.

Mr. Turley created the POPS program after assisting and elderly inmate, pro bono.  In the course of this work he soon found many other older prisoners who were seeking assistance.  He started the POPS program in 1989 at George Washington University Law School.  It now operates in five states, as well as Washington, D.C.  Through this program law students volunteer their time to identify low-risk older offenders who may be eligible for release under community supervision.  Using risk assessment tools, they work with local corrections officials to identify these men and women.  To date, no prisoner that has been released has been re-incarcerated.

The insights from Mr. Turley as well as the guest speakers at the forum moved SURJ Board members and other advocates to work towards bringing the POPS program to Delaware.  This goal is part of SURJ’s 2009-2001 Agenda for Action.  SURJ Board Members Carl Schnee and Janet Leban have been hard at work to make this program a reality in Delaware.  We are pleased that Delaware Department of Correction Commissioner Carl Danberg has been involved and interested in this process. The SURJ office will keep SURJ members up to date on bringing the POPS program to Delaware.